It depends on your goals, right? Well, yeah… kind of.
There is one type of exercise that is appropriate, and best, for almost everyone: High Intensity.
Whether your goal is fat loss, sporting success, or gaining health then high intensity exercise is critical (perhaps literally when it comes to ‘health’ goal-orientated people).
Of course there are some obvious exceptions: Ultra-endurance athletes, high-risk cardiac patients etc, however high intensity exercise should be the key aspect of your most peoples training program.
High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) has been shown in numerous scientifically controlled studies to benefit endurance training. No longer is long slow running/cycling/swimming the cornerstone of training that it once was. Something top coaches have been practicing for years are slowly making their way into general use: Intervals such as 6-10*3min, or 4-6*4min, or 6-8*5min efforts have become the ‘secret’ weapon of the weekend warrior.
In terms of weight loss HIIT consistently outperforms other type of exercise. There are a few reasons for this, but one often sighted is raised metabolism from HIIT that ‘burns’ calories long after the exercise stops – compared to post-aerobic exercise that raises metabolism only mildly, and for not as long.
When it comes to HIIT one of the barriers to the average weekend warrior is being ‘fit’ enough to complete the training. It is a real chicken and the egg situation: HIIT is the best way to increase fitness, and yet you need to be fit to complete HIIT.
Well, it needn’t be that way. My recommendation is to start as many intervals as you can at the ‘desired’ intensity ie an intensity that will enable you to meet your performance goal once you are able to complete a full session. As you gradually adapt to this you will be able to complete more and more intervals, and get the associated benefits.
The personal touch that a counselor, mentor, coach, family member, or training partner offers is crucial to any weight loss or athletic success.
It is because in times of “lazy temptation” (such as not doing planned exercise or eating crap), it is the added burdenguilt support of these aforementioned people that keep us on track.
Chose your friends carefully, but simply having a support person who will check up on you from time to time can make a huge difference also.
Everybody should use body-weight exercises, such as a push up, as part of their fitness routine. One of the many advantages is that, because most require no equipment, you can perform them anywhere. But now Gymbox have taken the term to a whole new level.
Defining your goal is crucial to the success of any exercise and/or nutrition intervention. This is because it determines exactly what you should be focusing on. To use an obvious example: is your goal to look good, or perform well? Yes, there are large overlapping aspects of the program, but their prescriptions would fundamentally differ. Also, do you want to look good once (ie at a wedding, or this summer), or are you looking at the long term? Again, I would approach both scenarios very differently.
Once the goal is decided, spend a good amount of time focusing on your particular strengths & weaknesses. For example:
If you want to lose weight: When do you eat well, and when badly?
If you want to play better golf: What is the best/worst part of your game?
If you want to become a better basketball player: What aspects of your game lets you down, and what do you always do well?
The biggest bang for your buck is often eliminating weaknesses (even though most athletes enjoy practicing what they are good at more).
Failing you having an easily identifiable strength or weakness, then put your time into what gives you the biggest bang for your buck for your specific goal. For example:
For someone wanting to lose weight this is undoubtedly what you eat.
For an athlete of a sport in which body composition is not important (Snooker, Golf etc): undoubtedly, practicing the skills of the sport.
For an Ironman, spend some time on the bike.
Once you have identified what you need to focus on then you need to break the skills of the sport and/or your eating patterns down a little more. For example:
If you are like me then most of your bad eating is post dinner – this therefore is where you need to focus your energy. For others it may be lunch time at work, or skipping breakfast.
If you play golf then focus on your short game as this is where the most shots are played per round (40% of strokes per round are putts for most golfers).
And if you are a fighter, don’t worry too much about your dancing around the ring.
Unfortunately the reality of many elite sports these days is that the technology to test and catch drug cheats is, in all but a few cases, going to come after the sporting bodies know an illegal drug even exists.
But is this the governing bodies fault? Not at all. How can these organisations possible compete with companies who manufacture these performance enhancing substances full time? How can they predict what the new, specifically manufactured, performance enhancing drugs are going to be? It is close to impossible, and for this reason there is always going to be a lag before tests are developed to detect new drugs. In some cases this will not be till well after the athlete in question has set world records and retired.
So what is the answer?
Unfortunately there is nothing little governing bodies can do to prevent intelligent, well planned cheats from getting away with it. Only those on lower budgets and/or of lower intelligence will ever get caught.
Perhaps the only answer lies in an ‘open’ drug Olympics, where athletes can take what they like? Some cynics would argue that is not too far from what we have now…
Why is it that fitness is so hard to gain, yet so easy to lose?
If you have slogged away for months gaining some areobic fitness, only to return from a three week holiday in a lot worse shape then you have experienced the effect of de-training.
It is an unfortunate reality, that fitness is a lot harder to gain than it is to lose.
It all has to do with the daily stress you put your body under: If you follow a well periodised training program then you are sure to experience excellent gains. If you place your body under too much stress then you are likely to get injured or suffer from over-training. To little stress and you will not progress very fast at all. No stress at all and your body will not be given the stimulus to burn stored energy in your body (read: fat) nor put on muscle.
When we train over a period of time the body gradually adapts to the ‘stress’ we are putting it under. If suddenly that stops the body immediately begins to adapt to the new ‘normal stress’ state ( ie nothing) by dumping the excess muscle and associated metabolic enzymes/proteins it no longer requires.
The obvious and easy way to prevent this is to continue to train all year round. This does not mean long and hard all the time, but by stressing your body between events/weddings you will find you are in a lot better shape all year round – literally and figuratively.
“It never gets easier, you just go faster.” Greg LeMond
I have just finished a great book by Malcom Gladwell called Outliers. One of the themes of the book is how people who have achieved success have more often than not had a number of fortunate events take place in their lives (including in many cases begin born at the right time!), and have spent a lot of time practicing their area of expertise.
It reminds me of the success of many sportsmen.
Time spent training and competing is an attribute that people often fail to identify when discussing the success of athletes. We hear how an athlete is ‘gifted’ or has ‘natural talent’, but when you dive a little deeper you find that the person actually has simply trained hard and regularly – and not a lot more. Also, doing the sport/event from a young age is crucial. Think Tiger Woods. I think a lot of his success comes from practicing regularly for year upon year – and since he was very young.
So the secret is really no secret at all. If you want to get good at something practice specifically that. If you want to improve your flexibility then stretch. If you want to run faster then spend some more time running. If you want to lose fat then spend less time eating food you know is no good for you. If you want to be better at shooting free throws then shoot a lot of free throws.
The recipe is simple. Work hard at what you want to improve in, and you almost certainly will.
Here is an impressive demonstration from ‘The Chin Up Master’:
Some interesting points:
This is performed at a playground – no membership or specialised machinery needed!
The “full” pull ups (that start at about 45 seconds into the video) are an incredibly hard exercise. Being able to do even one of these makes it worth taking a video of yourself and putting it on Youtube!
These exercises are some of the best upper body exercises you can possibly do, no matter what your goal.
If you find them too difficult then your aim should be to build up to them. Do them after your warm up, and if you can only do 1 repetition (or half a repetition) do not worry. You will gradually get stronger…
If you think a gym (and the associated equipment) is the answer to you gaining muscle, losing fat, gaining health, or achieving athletic goals (or a combination of), then you are likely to be very disappointed from your membership. The reason is that going to the gym and doing the appropriate exercises does not automatically happen from having a membership!
Motivation, desire, and well formed habits are the key to you achieving your goals.
Home exercises are excellent if you have the aforementioned traits. The problem with exercising from home is that the same ‘gym’ mistakes are made. Making my point are the Ab Flexes, Home Gyms, and Swiss Balls gathering dust in garages around the world right now.
If you are interested in exercise from home then check out this exercise that I saw recently on Coach Dos‘ blog: a ‘Spiderman’ Push Up.
10 of those will be enough to push all but well trained individuals. For most building up to more than two will take time.
If you do find that version too difficult then try doing it without moving the starting point of your hands. If that is still too difficult then no need to raise your knee towards your elbow.
This is not to say don’t buy home exercise equipment. My point is that by doing exercises that require no equipment you can test yourself to see if exercising from home is really a good, sustainable option for you.
Consult your doctor before following any of the exercise or nutritional advice posted on this site.
If you feel pain, shortness of breath, dizziness, or faintness at any time stop the activity and/or eating prescription immediately.
KitchenPT.com and Bradley Simpson take no responsibility to any injury or loss incurred from following advice posted on this site.
